I recognize most of the administrators from the Trombone Forum. Since someone else( besides a TTForumite) owns the Domain name I was wondering if this is a Replacement site. Will TTF ever come back?
John McKevitt

I've seen this assertion here before. The WHOIS database lists the domain registrant as Domains By Proxy. This is GoDaddy's masking service, which allows the actual registrant to hide contact information from spammers, especially mailing address, e-mail address, and phone number. This is a common practice (I use such a service for my domains) and as far as I know has always been the case at TTF.

I've also noted assertions here that the TTF server lives in its proprietor's garage. In the past there has been good reason to believe that TTF did, in fact, run on a server physically located at his residence, but DNS currently shows the domain residing on an "amazonaws.com" server, which indicates it has been moved to Amazon"s cloud computing service.

And, yes, this is the "new" trombone forum -- or at least it darn well should be. After more than a decade of inadequate support from the TTF proprietor the community deserves better. That's what you'll find here.

Most of the people here wash, and bathe regularly. I’m not sure about that other site, which isn’t functional. That one is starting to look like a scam.

If it is a scam, it's a darn poorly run one. Every day the site is down, people are less likely to send money to get it back up again. As far as I know, no one has been hit up for money since the site went down. There was a push for money some months ago, but nothing since.

Both Tubenet and Dave Werden's Euphonium-Tuba forums have been running successfully for a long time without subscription fees (which definitely would drive away a number of potential forum members). Of course, they're also set up to run advertisements to help fund the forum. Looking at successful forums like these may be the best guide to a support model.

The older site is a repository of priceless information, the input from knowledgable professionals over decades. (yeah, and some garbage with the gems)

It would be a shame to lose that.

I think most of the effort running it was volunteered, and costs came out of their pockets. Maybe we need a subscription fee to run this one better.

I think it is unlikely that that information will be restored. There is just too much difference between modern versions of the software and the version TTF was running on. To dump and re-assemble the old data to fit the new DB structure would be a monumental task. Given the proprietors past efforts I doubt he'll bother ... but I could be worng.

The older site is a repository of priceless information, the input from knowledgable professionals over decades. (yeah, and some garbage with the gems)

It would be a shame to lose that.

I think most of the effort running it was volunteered, and costs came out of their pockets. Maybe we need a subscription fee to run this one better.

I think it is unlikely that that information will be restored. There is just too much difference between modern versions of the software and the version TTF was running on. To dump and re-assemble the old data to fit the new DB structure would be a monumental task. Given the proprietors past efforts I doubt he'll bother ... but I could be worng.

2 weeks, huh?

Yeah, right.

Can specific info be found with a search? or way back machine or something?

Yes, of course it would be nice if they came over by themselves, but wouldn't it be possible to try to actively try to get them here?

I know you guys already do a lot for the trombone community, so thanks for all you do!

Maybe some of the folks (all of you included) can alert the folks you want to see here to come over. I don't have personal contact with most folks and am not on any social media, either. Get the word out!

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Get the word out! Make www.trombonechat.com our community!

Can specific info be found with a search? or way back machine or something?

I have seen stuff from TTF cached elsewhere (not sure where now). Matt said he crawled TTF and took a copy of the data, but it would be a monumental task to insert it into TromboneChat in it's original form for a variety of reasons. It might be better to build a separate searchable DB for it and make it available online.

There seems to be some trepidation about ownership of the information. It belongs to the people that posted it, but for some reason everyone chooses not to believe that. I suppose that a poster could object to it being displayed to the public through TromboneChat rather than TTF, but I'm not sure they would have any legal recourse beyond asking to have it taken down. They would first have to prove it was them that wrote it. That may be difficult to do.

One thing I know for sure, the data does NOT belong to TTF. No such contract was ever in place on TTF (like with google or facephuck and the rest of those stupid social media blood suckers).

I've seen this assertion here before. The WHOIS database lists the domain registrant as Domains By Proxy. This is GoDaddy's masking service, which allows the actual registrant to hide contact information from spammers, especially mailing address, e-mail address, and phone number. This is a common practice (I use such a service for my domains) and as far as I know has always been the case at TTF.

And, yes, this is the "new" trombone forum -- or at least it darn well should be. After more than a decade of inadequate support from the TTF proprietor the community deserves better. That's what you'll find here.

I did a WHOIS search awhile back and it listed a Gregg Ostrick as the owner. I re-did a search today after reading your post and it is indeed Domains by Proxy. Tromboneforum.com is owned by Osterick, so maybe the ICANN database was funky for a minute.

It does remain pretty puzzling (to me at least) how there can be so close to zero interaction with the TTF owner, when all are agreed that they're sitting on a store of information of great value to us, and there seems no confidence that that information, which was previously freely available, is going to ever be available to anyone else again.

It's known where he lives, right? There are TTF/TC members in every corner of that country, right? I would happily drive some hours to go knock on his door to have a friendly chat that contained pertinent questions if I happened to be a near enough poster to him - I presume that someone must have done this? Surely? Is he maybe known to be particularly unwelcoming to visitors, enough so to discourage an exploratory expedition?

I think the resource wasn't so much the countless posts but the people making them.

With the right musicians in the mix it won't be long until there is plenty of "priceless information" on this site.

Some of the most skilled and knowledgeable members on TTF re-stated their core ideas numerous times with slight variations for each new situation. If they make it here, I have no doubt that they would respond to new conversations with newer and more refined takes on what they believe to be correct in brass playing.

I would take this as an opportunity to let go of the weight of the history of the old forum and see if this can be an even better, even more supportive place to talk about music and playing the trombone.

I think the resource wasn't so much the countless posts but the people making them.

Hard to separate the people from the posts, especially regarding TTF members like Erling Kroner and Mike Suter, among several who are no longer with us. Some of the best info on the evolution of Holton bass trombones came from Mike.

Even among the members who are still with us, I doubt most are willing to re-create some of the classic posts. There was a huge range of information beyond chit-chat or specific helpful hints on which slide lube is "best." I wonder how willing Sam, for instance, will be to reproduce some of his classic posts on the continuum of time from kHz to BPM.

Even on this site I noticed things lost in the upgrade. I'm not inclined to re-do posts on things like using a borescope to check valve alignment and spitvalve condition.

That being said, THIS site is now the best show in town. Big kudos to the promethian folks who brought it to life AND upgraded it. THIS site deserves a good try by all involved. No telling IF TTF will ever come back to life, and if so, WHEN it will go dark again, or for how long.

Is this the new TTF? No. I is whatever the admins and members make of it. No more, no less.

Yeah, it's more complex than people vs. posts. boneagain is exactly right above - there are people who've contributed great TTF material who are now deceased; there are people who've contributed great TTF material who may not for whatever reason feel the urge to repeat that effort elsewhere.

Everyone gets replaced in life; in time (if TTF stays down for good) TC should replicate that kind of archived content depth, with new quality posters appearing and making the place their own in the way older versions of them made TTF their own. But that doesn't change the fact that right now, the archive of good stuff has been taken away from us. Sometimes building afresh from the ground up is a good thing - in fact, in the long run it is almost always felt to have been beneficial. But we're talking plenty of years here - in a decade or two, if the current situation persists, people will still sometimes regret lack of access to the TTF archive.

p.s. I'm still mightily puzzled about the apparent lack of contact with the TTF owner. Surely there's somebody suitable to knock on his door?

I assume nothing... He might care and want to help. He might slam his door with an expletive and then move house in order not to be found again. He might be defensive but open up on conversational effort. He might feel bad after slamming the door and then open it when you knock again.

We don't know unless someone actually goes and knocks on his door. Has anyone? We know he doesn't respond reliably to emails - but I'm sure we've all fixed trombone sections... About the first thing one learns is that there are lots of good people who are poor responders by email - it's infuriatingly bad etiquette, but they don't mean anything by it.
My bafflement is that we have a group of people here who care hard enough about it all to have set up this site, with all the attendant effort, when there's surely someone among us suitable for the smaller effort knocking-on-the-door task within reach of the TTF owner.

I should say - I am expecting at this point to be told that this has already been done, but that I'm just not aware of it, as I've never been within the discussions of the managing group of posters on either site.

Anyhow, since I wrote the above post, the TTF archive feature here has appeared, which makes the point somewhat moot.

I think what someone complicates this is that, according to his announcement prior to having downtime, he indicated that he was moving a rather large distance. I don't think anyone knows where he physically lives, at least on here. I don't know anyone who has his contact information beyond what is published on the site registrations.

Myself and Martin (drizabone) plan to finish off the bible-reading thread somehow. We won't be able to do that here, so we'll have to work out an alternative venue. Possibly a Google document.
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Dave, I finally found figured out that TTF might not come back as quickly as suggested or even come back.

I checked this site which I had only occasionaly looked at and finally registered. Since apparenlty I had missed a deadline, I needed to register with a slight variation on my Username.

Anway, I'm trying to find out about what the status might be of some of our chats on the Religion threads such as Read the Book. The above had quotes within quotes, so it's a little hard to figure out whose quote is whose but some want to continue, but others are not so sure.

Anway, it looks like earlier there was going to be room for such discussions in this site, but maybe not so clear now.

You also suggested that we might use an alternative means such as a Google doc.

Just keep me posted on that because I've missed our interesting chats.

We're planning on updating a sticky for the single off-topic forum we have soon to clarify everything. Basically we had a lot of complaints and people leaving/not wanting to suggest the site to students at TTF over politics and religion. We don't have any problems talking about that sort of thing but even having an opt-out (as it was at the TTF) was somewhat difficult to manage and also could be construed as a tacit endorsement of particular ideas in the event that someone said something say controversial that was borderline censorship worthy. Keeping it would have been an endorsement that such an opinion was acceptable, censoring would have been an endorsement the other direction. We'd rather not put ourselves in that position. We can get contentious enough about choice in mouthpieces let alone the presence or absence of a deity

I have reached out to Dave with as complete of a backup as I have and I offered some suggestions about other formats that might even be more conducive. If help is needed setting something up, do feel free to contact me about it. I can't promise a prompt response - very busy in the next month - and I'm focused on maintaining this site and some personal projects I have going on but I think it may yet be fruitful information worthy of discussion and for that I'd be willing to lend a hand if I'm able.

I have reached out to Dave with as complete of a backup as I have and I offered some suggestions about other formats that might even be more conducive. If help is needed setting something up, do feel free to contact me about it. I can't promise a prompt response - very busy in the next month - and I'm focused on maintaining this site and some personal projects I have going on but I think it may yet be fruitful information worthy of discussion and for that I'd be willing to lend a hand if I'm able.

Thanks Matt, I do appreciate it, and I'll get back to your latest PM shortly with suggestions. I don't have a great desire to create a separate space for trombonists to debate religion and politics in, but I and some others (Martin and John at least) do particularly want to complete the bible-reading project that we'd put so much effort into - the input of different views (in the thread contributors we had atheists and also Christians of various classifications) made it very interesting, and it largely avoided the needle that marred too many Practice Break posts, in what was something of an effort to detoxify the place.

There's still some hope that TTF might come back and we could complete in situ, but it's hard to be too optimistic on that front...